A correspondent looks back on a week of hope and despair in Burma's brief, shining--but ultimately doomed--uprising

You should get closer," says the young woman in the crowd behind me. "If foreigners are here, they won't shoot." It's about 1 p.m. on Sept. 27, and I am wedged among thousands of pro-democracy protesters near the gold-domed Sule Pagoda in downtown Rangoon. Facing us are hundreds of soldiers and riot police, who look on edge as they finger their assault rifles. The woman behind me is hoping that they won't want to create an international incident by firing on a scruffy-looking Brit, and that my presence will protect the protesters. She will soon be proved terribly wrong. But for...